Please understand that this is directed at no one in particular, and I mean that in earnest, entirely. It’s not that I have anything against anyone. Nothing but respect. Sincerely.
When people slip latin phrasing, (without even ever bothering to provide any definition), casually into conversation, correspondence, it is extremely hard for me to see anything other than overt, condescending, douchebaggery. So much so, I find myself acutely embarrassed for them.
I’ll apologize right now, I’m sure it’s only me, and my personal short coming.
I don’t feel this way with my Chinese friends who toss in a Mandarin phrase, or Jewish friends who teach me a new Yiddish word. (Though they are mannered enough to make an explanatory aside, of course!) Jargon in excessive use, will drive me from a conversation, on occasion. Even Nerdy friend speaking Kingon doesn’t give me that same gut response.
There is something about the Latin, rubs me like people bragging about going to Harvard or Yale.
I am impressed with intelligence and learning, and great universities, having admiration for all these things. But if it’s all you talk about now I just see a douche.
What’s the context? It may be they’re simply assuming the people they’re talking to would know the meaning, and they find it to be the best way to communicate the idea.
I’m glad you didn’t make this pitting an ad hominem. English is the de facto world language now, and according to the clamor of the vox populi, Latin is now terra incognita for most people. Vae victis! I hereby veto the use of Latin words, phrases, et cetera, and I’d be ever so grateful if you’d speak and write using only small words that I already know.
(And no, my alma mater is neither Harvard nor Yale; nor did I graduate magna cum laude).
Except that it almost never actually is the best way to communicate anything.
Look at the following, and tell me it’s not easier to understand:
I’m glad you didn’t make this pitting a personal attack. English is essentially the world language now, and according to what most people say, Latin is not understood by most people. I hereby reject the use of Latin words, phrases, and so on, and I’d be ever so grateful if you’d speak and write using only small words that I already know.
(And no, I graduated from neither Harvard nor Yale; nor did I graduate with honors or at the top of my class).
That’s easier, but it’s debatable whether it’s “best” - “best” is defined by the setting. As just one example, using “ad hominem” in a logic class, in a debate, etc., is proper and often expected.
By the way - “essentially” and “hereby” should probably have been substituted, using the criteria that simple is better. Just because the latter is Middle English doesn’t mean “most people” understand it.
Apparently, the fact that “humor” is also a Latin word meant that my post was not understood.
ETA: And all of the expressions I used are “actually English,” in that they have been borrowed from Latin into English. Where do you draw the line at what to purge? “Except” and “communicate” are Latinate, as are “attack” and “essentially” and a good chunk of the rest of your post. “Vox populi” is reasonably well known in Britain, but (in my experience) rare in America.
It’s really all about context. I try to use language that is appropriate to the audience. Sure, ad hominem is equivalent to a personal attack, but in the context of a debate, it’s a term that ought to be well known by anyone well versed in rhetoric and it specifically calls out the personal attack as a logical fallacy. That extra connotation is useful in the context of a debate but probably not useful in a random conversation with someone else. Similarly, in other cases it just makes more sense. For instance, alma mater, alumnus, all that sort of stuff is well known to any fluent English speaker and immediately has the context of relating to college, where saying the place I graduated from is less specific and longer to say.
I will say that people who excessively use latin phrasing do come across as arrogant or trying to appear smarter than they are, but in my view, it’s really no different than using excessive jargon or large words for no reason. That is, someone who uses works like utilize, facilitate, and all that are at least as bad. Speaking personally, I sometimes lose context because I’ll use latin terms in a context I’d expect people understand (as in a debate) that loses people or some internet related terms (eg, troll, fail/win, poke, epeen, and a number of others I can’t specifically recall right now) that even some computer savy people don’t understand without an explanation. At least for me, it’s not about showing off, it’s just not necessarily fulling understanding my audience’s context. So I can really only get behind pitting people who specifically do it to look smarter and ultimately become more difficult to understand rather than people who just make a simple mistake.
Except that sometimes it is. There are a handful I’ll occasionally use, which either have subtly different meanings from their nearest English equivalent, are less verbose, provide emphasis, or simply scan better.
ad hoc
ad nauseum
et cetera
de facto
post mortem
ipso facto
in extremis
non sequiter
per capita
pro rata
There are some foreign phrases, including some Latin ones, that include much more meaning than just their bare translations in their contexts. Consider a French one, “cherchez la femme”. It literally means “look for the woman”. In fact, to those who are familiar with it, it can mean that if there is a change in a man’s behavior, he probably has a new love interest, or that if there is a problem, a woman is probably behind it, or that women are the root causes of pretty much everything that happens. So if someone has a reasonable expectation that his readers will know or be willing to look up “cherchez la femme”, it can be a good phrase to use.
Particularly in the world we live in, where looking up a foreign phrase is nearly a seamless enterprise with reading, foreign phrases painlessly enrich writing. Its not like you have to go to the library to find a Latin dictionary.
I agree that obscure terminology – not just Latin phrases – can be just to show off a person’s special knowledge. However, these days almost anything can be explained by copying-and-pasting into Google.
Evidently the occasional use of a conventional Latin phrase like “et cetera” (abbreviated “etc”) doesn’t always bother you as much as you supposed.
So what’s the level of casual Latinity that does stir the needle on your annoyance meter? “Pro forma”? “Ipso facto”? “De mortuis”?
I think we can all agree that somebody offhandedly quoting whole passages of Vergil or Saint Augustine without any accompanying explanation is either a cluelessly isolated bookworm or a showoff trying to impress people with erudition. But you seem to experience that reaction even for routine use of common Latin loanwords and well-known conventional phrases, and that does seem a bit excessive to me.
Worse than that, it’s apparently just you this year.